They
might be crazy, but fringe presidential candidates speak volumes
about America

By
Andrew Gumbel

The
French deconstructionists taught us that, sometimes, the best
way to understand something is to look not front and center,
but at some small, seemingly insignificant detail on the very
fringe. In that spirit, perhaps the best way to understand
the upcoming year of presidential campaigning is to look at
the candidates who do not stand a snowball’s chance in hell,
who will probably never generate the slightest name recognition
and may, indeed, be certifiably insane.

I’m talking about the go-it-alone candidates who file papers
all by themselves, who set up campaign websites as warped
monuments to their own egos, and who flounder in obscurity
for a few months in pursuit of no more than a few dozen votes,
if they are lucky.

Since we are in America, these candidates are, first and foremost,
irresistibly colorful: the Satanist wrestler with an insatiable
sexual appetite who wants to impale terrorists, execute every
last LAPD officer, and conduct gay marriages on the White
House lawn (Jonathon “The Impaler” Sharkey—check him out);
the preacher without a congregation who rails against the
demon drink on behalf of the Prohibition Party but really
just wants to land a date (Gene Amondson of Vashon Island,
Washington); or Frank Moore, the celebrated performance artist
from Berkeley who, undaunted by the cerebral palsy that prevents
him walking or talking, is running on a “just makes sense”
platform with the sex advisor Dr. Susan Block.

The really interesting candidates, though, are the introverts,
the ones who aren’t especially articulate or charismatic—in
fact, quite a few have trouble with basic grammar and spelling—but
nevertheless reflect the preoccupations of many millions of
their fellow Americans. Again and again, their amateur-hour
manifestos hammer home the same points: the system is broken,
the Democrat-Republican duopoly stifles debate, politicians
are corrupted by big money and don’t represent the people
who elect them, campaigns are nothing but platitudinous hot
air, and the media is complicit in reducing the great political
stage show to nothing but meaningless bullshit.

“Have
either of the parties really done a great job taking care
of America?” asks Tee Barkdull, an angry military veteran
from California who says he’s sick of being raped by the “silver-spooned
rich” of the establishment. “The elephant knows what to do
but, is only out for it’s self [sic]. The mule, is just to
stubborn to do what’s right for America.”

And here’s another revealing line from Steve “common sense
for uncommon times” Adams from Lexington, Kentucky: “The Presidency
is no easy job and should not be entrusted to anyone who can
write a nice website.”

Given the overscripted vacuousness we’ve had from the mainstream
candidates these past several months— “I’m a mill-worker’s
son/regular guy/embodiment of American dream who will stand
firm for American values and wish you all a very merry Christmas”
—do any of them, by this standard, deserve our vote?

The fringe candidates may be doing no more than tossing around
idle opinions, but they are also spot-on in many of their
diagnoses. A Rasmussen Reports survey conducted in September
confirmed just how god-awful the reception of the 2008 candidates
has been; 56 percent of likely voters agreed that the mainstream
presidential campaign is “annoying and a waste of time.” (Just
imagine what the 50 percent of Americans who don’t vote must
think.)

More recently, Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership found
that more than three-quarters of all Americans think the country
is undergoing a profound leadership crisis. When asked how
much confidence they have in their politicians, half the respondents
answered “not much” or “none at all.”

That confidence can hardly have been boosted by the sight
of Republican candidates scrapping over which of them would
be most pitiless in hunting down, torturing, and killing terrorists
(“Me! Me! Me!”); or by the Democrats arguing, like a bunch
of drunks boasting about their hunting exploits, over which
of them has the biggest, most comprehensive health plan. (We
all know—but rarely hear on the airwaves—that any health plan,
barring some truly exceptional leadership, is going to be
hobbled or killed outright by the power of the insurance and
pharmaceutical lobbies.)

The Harvard study was also scathing about a media seemingly
obsessed with trivialities like John Edwards’s haircut or
Barack Obama’s middle name or Hillary’s on-again, off-again
flirtation with Celine Dion as her chosen campaign theme songstress.
A stunning 88 percent of respondents said the media focuses
too much on unimportant issues, while an equally stunning
92 percent said they were thirsty for nuts-and-bolts information
on candidates’ policy positions. In other words, the survey’s
authors concluded, citizens are getting “exactly the type
of campaign coverage that they want the least.”

Bill Clinton, to his credit, raised some of the Harvard findings
on the campaign trail in New Hampshire earlier this month.
“Sixty-seven percent of the coverage is pure politics. That
stuff has a half life of about 15 seconds. It won’t matter
tomorrow,” he said. “One percent of the press coverage was
devoted to their record in public life. No wonder people think
experience is irrelevant. A lot of the people covering the
race think it is [irrelevant].”

Clinton’s objections are incontrovertible, even if his wife
has been as guilty as anyone—perhaps guiltier—of dragging
the tenor of the campaign down, what with her petty attacks
on her most dangerous rival, Obama, including a personal slur
based on something he wrote in kindergarten.

It’s not just that the voters deserve better. The whole structure
of American politics is inadequate to the task of determining
the future direction of the country, and with it much of the
planet. Rarely has there been an election with so much to
talk about—the vulnerabilities of America as an imperial power,
the shape of the global security order, the question of international
consensus versus American strong-arm isolationism, the threats
of nuclear proliferation, religious fundamentalism and global
warming, the question of energy independence and its knock-on
effect on U.S. policy in the Middle East . . . and that’s
only in the international arena.

It’s a sad fact of American politics that only the candidates
on the very outer edge of the mainstream—Dennis Kucinich,
Ron Paul—have the courage to address these issues with any
forthrightness and yet are punished for their pains with the
kooky lunatic label and excluded from most, if not all, of
the big debates and other public forums.

Ostensibly it is their ideas that get them into trouble, but
really it is their audacity to air them in the first place.
Hillary, Barack et al are too scared to articulate any meaningful
critique of U.S. policy in the Middle East, other than to
say they’d like a little less of it. (The incendiary topics
of Israel and Saudi Arabia go largely unaddressed.) Even where
candidates do indulge in any policy substance, they are usually
berated for it. As Eric Boehlert pointed out in a piece for
Media Matters, an unusually substance-rich Democratic candidates’
debate hosted by NPR in Iowa on December 4 was either ignored
by the mainstream media or dismissed as a “snooze”—the New
York Daily News’ verdict.

None of this is remotely helpful to the voters, or to building
confidence in the future. We don’t know where we are going,
and those who would be our next leaders aren’t giving us any
clues.

Interestingly, a clear majority of the self-appointed fringe
presidential candidates are disillusioned conservatives, as
opposed to liberals, who want to get out of Iraq, or balance
the budget, or solve the immigration question, or get serious
about that old Republican standby, lowering taxes for all
Americans, not just the rich.

Perhaps that’s not surprising, given the deep unpopularity
of the Republicans and the longevity of their tenure in high
federal office. It suggests what we already know to be true—that
the White House is the Democrats’ for the taking in 2008.
The grand prize, though, will be theirs by default, not because
they’ve made any cogent argument for it. That doesn’t bode
well for turnout, and it doesn’t bode well for the imagination
of the next administration. In short, this democracy is in
trouble, at just the moment when vigorous debate and tough
decision-making are needed most.

Andrew
Gumbel is a staff writer for Los Angeles CityBeat,
where this article first appeared.